UGC NET English
1. Along with Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao is famously regarded as one of the _____ of Indian Writing in English.
A) Tragic Trio
B) Big Three ✅
C) Lost Generation
D) Renaissance Poets
2. Raja Rao’s first novel, Kanthapura (1938), is structurally modeled on which traditional Indian literary form?
A) Mahakavya
B) Upanishad
C) Sthala-purana ✅
D) Natyashastra
3. In the famous Foreword to Kanthapura, Raja Rao states: "There is no village in India... that has not a rich _____."
A) History of colonial resistance
B) Folktale of local demons
C) Sthala-purana, or a legendary history of its own ✅
D) Connection to the Vedic rishis
4. Which character in Kanthapura is described as the "Village Gandhi"?
A) Moorthy ✅
B) Range Gowda
C) Bade Khan
D) Bhatta
5. Who serves as the narrator of the novel Kanthapura?
A) Moorthy
B) The White Owner
C) Achakka, an old grandmother ✅
D) Ratna, the young widow
6. Raja Rao won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964 for which of his novels?
A) Kanthapura
B) The Serpent and the Rope ✅
C) The Cat and Shakespeare
D) Comrade Kirillov
7. Which philosophical system forms the central metaphysical core of The Serpent and the Rope?
A) Vishishtadvaita
B) Dvaita
C) Advaita Vedanta (Non-dualism) ✅
D) Zen Buddhism
8. In The Serpent and the Rope, the metaphor of the "serpent" and the "rope" represents the dichotomy between:
A) Good and Evil
B) The Colonizer and the Colonized
C) Illusion and Reality ✅
D) Masculine and Feminine Principles
9. The protagonist of The Serpent and the Rope, Ramaswamy, is married to a French woman named:
A) Savithri
B) Madeleine ✅
C) Catherine
D) Saroja
10. Which female character in The Serpent and the Rope symbolizes the Feminine Principle and the power of devotion leading toward self-realization?
A) Madeleine
B) Savithri ✅
C) Little Mother
D) Saroja
11. Raja Rao described which of his works as a "metaphysical comedy" and a "book of prayer"?
A) The Chessmaster and His Moves
B) Kanthapura
C) The Cat and Shakespeare ✅
D) Comrade Kirillov
12. The "Cat-hold theory" (Marjara-nyaya) discussed in The Cat and Shakespeare emphasizes which spiritual concept?
A) Active human effort to reach God
B) Total surrender (Prapatti) to divine grace ✅
C) The illusion of the material world
D) Social reform through political action
13. In The Cat and Shakespeare, the philosophical analogy of the kitten carried by its mother cat is used by:
A) Govindan Nair ✅
B) Ramakrishna Pai
C) Boothlingam Iyer
D) Sivarama Sastri
14. The Cat and Shakespeare is thematically associated with the "qualified non-dualism" of which philosopher?
A) Sankaracharya
B) Ramanujacharya (Vishishtadvaita) ✅
C) Madhvacharya
D) Swami Vivekananda
15. Which Raja Rao novel is described as a purposeful critique of communism?
A) Kanthapura
B) The Serpent and the Rope
C) Comrade Kirillov ✅
D) The Chessmaster and His Moves
16. The character Padmanabha Iyer in Comrade Kirillov is heavily influenced by the works of:
A) Leo Tolstoy
B) Fyodor Dostoevsky ✅
C) Anton Chekhov
D) Maxim Gorky
17. Why does the narrator "R" in Comrade Kirillov describe the protagonist as an "inverted Brahmin"?
A) Because he places material (Marxist) ends above spiritual ones ✅
B) Because he marries a non-Indian woman
C) Because he rejects the sacred thread
D) Because he supports the caste system
18. Which novel by Raja Rao is often regarded as his magnum opus and the first volume of a planned trilogy?
A) The Serpent and the Rope
B) The Chessmaster and His Moves ✅
C) Kanthapura
D) On the Ganga Ghat
19. In The Chessmaster and His Moves, the "Chessmaster" symbolizes:
A) The British Empire
B) The Human Ego
C) The Absolute / God / Brahman ✅
D) The Spirit of Mahatma Gandhi
20. In the Foreword to Kanthapura, Rao states that the goal is to convey in a language not one's own the _____ .
A) History of a marginalized people
B) Spirit that is one's own ✅
C) Nuances of Western modernism
D) Complexities of Marxist dialectics
21. Raja Rao was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in:
A) 1964
B) 1972
C) 1988 ✅
D) 2006
22. Raja Rao was posthumously awarded which civilian honor by the Government of India in 2007?
A) Padma Shri
B) Padma Bhushan
C) Padma Vibhushan ✅
D) Bharat Ratna
23. Which of the following is a non-fictional work by Raja Rao focused on the life of Mahatma Gandhi?
A) Changing India
B) The Meaning of India
C) The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi ✅
D) The Policeman and the Rose
24. The Cow of the Barricades (1947) is a collection of Rao’s _____ .
A) Verse
B) Short Stories ✅
C) Political Essays
D) Philosophical Lectures
25. Which spiritual figure served as Raja Rao’s mentor and guru, deeply influencing his later philosophical novels?
A) Swami Atmananda ✅
B) Sri Aurobindo
C) Ramana Maharishi
D) Swami Vivekananda
26. Which novel marked the debut of R. K. Narayan and introduced the fictional town of Malgudi?
A) The Bachelor of Arts
B) The English Teacher
C) Swami and Friends ✅
D) The Dark Room
27. R. K. Narayan is often grouped with two other pioneers as the "Big Three" of Indian Writing in English. Who are the other two?
A) Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao ✅
B) Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu
C) Anita Desai and Amitav Ghosh
D) Nissim Ezekiel and Kamala Das
28. Which British novelist served as Narayan’s mentor, helped him find a publisher for his first four books, and suggested he shorten his name?
A) E. M. Forster
B) Graham Greene ✅
C) Somerset Maugham
D) H. G. Wells
29. The "Malgudi Trilogy" or semi-autobiographical trilogy consists of which three novels?
A) Swami and Friends, The Guide, The Vendor of Sweets
B) The Financial Expert, Mr. Sampath, The Dark Room
C) Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The English Teacher ✅
D) Waiting for the Mahatma, The Painter of Signs, A Tiger for Malgudi
30. For which novel did R. K. Narayan receive the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960?
A) The Man-Eater of Malgudi
B) The Financial Expert
C) The Guide ✅
D) The Vendor of Sweets
31. In The Guide, the protagonist Raju undergoes a transformation. Identify the correct sequence of his roles:
A) Shopkeeper → Tourist Guide → Prisoner → Spiritual Guide ✅
B) Teacher → Manager → Sanyasi → Journalist
C) Lawyer → Politician → Saint → Thief
D) Actor → Dancer → Guru → Merchant
32. Which female character in The Guide abandons her husband, Marco, to pursue her passion for Bharatanatyam dance under the stage name "Nalini"?
A) Savitri
B) Rosie ✅
C) Daisy
D) Bharati
33. The English Teacher (1945) is a deeply poignant novel dedicated to Narayan’s wife. What was her name?
A) Susila
B) Rajam ✅
C) Hema
D) Ammani
34. Which novel by Narayan is based on the Bhasmasura myth, featuring a demon-like taxidermist named Vasu?
A) A Tiger for Malgudi
B) The Man-Eater of Malgudi ✅
C) The World of Nagaraj
D) Talkative Man
35. Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) is unique among Narayan’s works for its explicit political backdrop. Which movement does it focus on?
A) Non-Cooperation Movement
B) Civil Disobedience Movement
C) Quit India Movement ✅
D) Khilafat Movement
36. R. K. Narayan’s fictional town of Malgudi has often been compared to which other literary regions?
A) William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County
B) Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
C) Both (A) and (B) ✅
D) Neither (A) nor (B)
37. What is the title of R. K. Narayan’s 1974 memoir?
A) My Dateless Diary
B) My Days ✅
C) Reluctant Guru
D) The Emerald Route
38. In which novel does the character Jagan, a sweet-seller and follower of Gandhian principles, struggle with his son Mali’s modern, Westernized ideas?
A) The Financial Expert
B) The Vendor of Sweets ✅
C) Mr. Sampath
D) The Painter of Signs
39. The protagonist of The Financial Expert, who experiences a dramatic rise and fall in his quest for wealth, is named:
A) Margayya ✅
B) Chandran
C) Sriram
D) Nataraj
40. Which of the following works is a short-story collection by R. K. Narayan published in 1943?
A) An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories
B) Lawley Road and Other Stories
C) Malgudi Days ✅
D) Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories
41. The Painter of Signs (1976) features a relationship between Raman, a sign-painter, and a modern woman who is a family-planning activist. What is her name?
A) Rosie
B) Bharati
C) Daisy ✅
D) Shanta Bai
42. Narayan’s last published work of fiction (a novella) is titled:
A) The World of Nagaraj
B) Talkative Man
C) Grandmother’s Tale ✅
D) A Tiger for Malgudi
43. Arrange the following novels in their correct chronological order of publication:
The Guide
Swami and Friends
The Vendor of Sweets
The Bachelor of Arts
A) 2 – 4 – 1 – 3 ✅
B) 2 – 1 – 4 – 3
C) 4 – 2 – 1 – 3
D) 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
44. Which civil award was conferred upon R. K. Narayan in 2000?
A) Sahitya Akademi Fellowship
B) Padma Bhushan
C) Padma Vibhushan ✅
D) Bharat Ratna
45. R. K. Narayan is sometimes referred to as the "Indian ______" due to his simple style and portrayal of ordinary life.
A) Dickens
B) Chekhov ✅
C) Faulkner
D) Hardy
46. Which novel of Mulk Raj Anand is recognized as the first Indian English novel set during World War I?
A) The Village
B) The Sword and the Sickle
C) Across the Black Waters ✅
D) Untouchable
47. Who wrote the foreword to the later editions of Untouchable (1935)?
A) T. S. Eliot
B) E. M. Forster ✅
C) Virginia Woolf
D) Mahatma Gandhi
48. In the novel Coolie (1936), who is the 14-year-old protagonist who suffers due to poverty and exploitation?
A) Bakha
B) Ananta
C) Munoo ✅
D) Lalu
49. The "Lalu Trilogy" by Mulk Raj Anand consists of which three novels?
A) Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud
B) The Village, Across the Black Waters, The Sword and the Sickle ✅
C) The Big Heart, The Road, Death of a Hero
D) Morning Face, Confessions of a Lover, The Bubble
50. Which of Anand's novels deals with the conflict between hereditary coppersmiths (Thathiars) and the introduction of modern machinery?
A) Untouchable
B) Two Leaves and a Bud
C) The Sword and the Sickle
D) The Big Heart ✅
51. What was the name of the quarterly Indian art magazine founded by Mulk Raj Anand in 1946?
A) The Criterion
B) Marg ✅
C) Kavita
D) Indian Literature
52. In Two Leaves and a Bud, what is the name of the impoverished farmer who migrates to an Assam tea plantation?
A) Lakha
B) Gangu ✅
C) Ralia
D) Rakha
53. Mulk Raj Anand's 1981 memoir, depicting his relationships with members of the English modernist movement, is titled:
A) Conversations in Bloomsbury ✅
B) Apology for Heroism
C) Morning Face
D) The Bubble
54. The protagonist of Untouchable, Bakha, performs which specific task that defines his social status?
A) Tanning hides
B) Cleaning latrines ✅
C) Breaking stones
D) Forging copper
55. Which real-life experience inspired Anand to write Untouchable?
A) His time in the British Army
B) His aunt being ostracized for sharing a meal with a Muslim woman ✅
C) His friendship with Mahatma Gandhi at Sabarmati Ashram
D) His childhood in the coppersmith lane
56. Which character in The Big Heart is a young widow consumed by tuberculosis who lives with the protagonist, Ananta?
A) Sohini
B) Janaki ✅
C) Gauri
D) Phalini
57. Mulk Raj Anand is often compared to which European novelists due to his commitment to social realism?
A) Dickens and Hardy
B) Zola or Balzac ✅
C) Joyce and Woolf
D) Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
58. In the short story "The Gold Watch," what is the name of the clerk who feels a sense of dread after being summoned by his British boss?
A) Old Bapu
B) Srijut Sharma ✅
C) Khan Azam Khan
D) Govind
59. Which literary technique does Anand use in Untouchable to explore Bakha's internal world and the psychological toll of discrimination?
A) Epistolary Form
B) Allegory
C) Stream-of-Consciousness ✅
D) Picaresque Narrative
60. At the end of Untouchable, which technological advancement is suggested as a potential solution to the practice of manual scavenging?
A) The Railway
B) The Flush System (Flushing Toilet) ✅
C) The Printing Press
D) The Spinning Wheel
61. Which of the following is NOT a theme typically found in Anand’s short stories?
A) Rich versus Poor
B) Upper Castes versus Lower Castes
C) Romanticizing the British "Civilizing Mission" ✅
D) Men versus Women
62. Where did Mulk Raj Anand stay while revising the manuscript of Untouchable under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi?
A) Wardha
B) Sabarmati Ashram ✅
C) Bloomsbury
D) Amritsar
63. In the short story "A Pair of Mustachios," Khan Azam Khan is obsessed with maintaining which type of moustache to prove his lineage?
A) Goat Moustache
B) Tiger Moustache ✅
C) Lion Moustache
D) Dragon Moustache
64. Which city serves as the primary setting for the novel The Big Heart?
A) Bombay
B) Bulandshahr
C) Amritsar ✅
D) Ferozepur
65. In Across the Black Waters, Lalu's primary motivation for serving in the war is to:
A) Win Independence for India
B) Reclaim a Piece of Land His Family Lost ✅
C) Explore Western Culture
D) Prove His Bravery to His Father
66. Which of the following is Salman Rushdie’s debut novel, published in 1975?
A) Midnight’s Children
B) Shame
C) Grimus ✅
D) The Satanic Verses
67. Midnight’s Children was awarded special prizes in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate Booker Prize anniversaries. What were these awards called?
A) The Golden Booker and The Best Booker
B) The Booker of Bookers and The Best of the Booker ✅
C) The Ultimate Booker and The Diamond Booker
D) The People's Booker and The Legacy Award
68. In which novel did Rushdie coin the term "chutnification" to describe the incorporation of Indian elements into the English language?
A) Victory City
B) Shame
C) The Moor’s Last Sigh
D) Midnight’s Children ✅
69. The pseudonym "Joseph Anton," used by Rushdie while in hiding, combines the first names of which two authors?
A) Joseph Heller and Anton Webern
B) Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov ✅
C) Joseph Campbell and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
D) Joseph Andrews and Antonin Artaud
70. What is the unique narrative feature of Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012)?
A) It is written entirely in verse.
B) It uses a second-person perspective.
C) It is a third-person account of the author’s own life. ✅
D) It consists solely of letters and emails.
71. Who issued the 1989 fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death after the publication of The Satanic Verses?
A) Ayatollah Khamenei
B) Mohammad Khatami
C) Ayatollah Khomeini ✅
D) Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
72. In Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai is born at the exact moment of:
A) The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
B) The Emergency in India
C) India’s Independence (Midnight, August 15, 1947) ✅
D) Mahatma Gandhi’s Assassination
73. The 2023 novel Victory City is framed as a fictional translation of an ancient epic written in which language?
A) Persian
B) Sanskrit ✅
C) Urdu
D) Kannada
74. What is the subtitle of Rushdie’s 2024 memoir recounting the 2022 assassination attempt on his life?
A) Reflections on a Fatwa
B) Meditations After an Attempted Murder ✅
C) A Life in Hiding
D) The Pen and the Sword
75. What supernatural gift does Saleem Sinai possess in Midnight’s Children?
A) Invisibility
B) Telepathy ✅
C) Pyrokinesis
D) Immortality
76. Shame (1983) is primarily a roman à clef set in a fictionalized version of which country?
A) India
B) Bangladesh
C) Pakistan ✅
D) Nicaragua
77. Geetha Ganapathy-Doré describes Joseph Anton as a "postmodern fuzzy hybrid" because it combines elements of:
A) Epic Poetry and Drama
B) Autobiography, Detective Fiction, and Metafiction ✅
C) Scientific Journal and Travelogue
D) Gothic Horror and Pastoral Comedy
78. In the context of The Satanic Verses controversy, the derogatory name "Mahound" refers to:
A) A Devil Character
B) The Prophet Muhammad ✅
C) The Angel Gibreel
D) A Fourteenth-Century Princess
79. The protagonist and matriarch of the "miracle city" Bisnaga in Victory City is:
A) Parvati-the-witch
B) Pampa Kampana ✅
C) Pampa Devi
D) Haleya Kote
80. Which of Rushdie’s non-fiction works recounts his 1986 journey to Nicaragua?
A) Imaginary Homelands
B) Step Across This Line
C) The Jaguar Smile ✅
D) Languages of Truth
81. In Midnight’s Children, who is Saleem Sinai’s primary nemesis, also born at the stroke of midnight?
A) Shiva "of the Knees" ✅
B) Parvati-the-witch
C) Ayesha
D) Zafar
82. What is the title of Rushdie’s 2025 fiction story collection?
A) The Last Midnight
B) The Eleventh Hour ✅
C) The First Blackbird
D) The Midnight Children’s Conference
83. According to the sources, Rushdie studied history with an emphasis on Islamic culture at:
A) Oxford University
B) King’s College, Cambridge ✅
C) Rugby School
D) University of Bombay
84. Which political figure filed a defamation case against Rushdie in 1984 over a sentence in Midnight’s Children?
A) Benazir Bhutto
B) Indira Gandhi ✅
C) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
D) Margaret Thatcher
85. The "Satanic Verses" themselves, which form a subplot in the novel, are apocryphal verses said to have been spoken while praising:
A) Three Pagan Goddesses ✅
B) The Angel Gibreel
C) The Residents of Jahilia
D) A Fictionalized Scribe
86. Amitav Ghosh became the first English-language writer to receive which prestigious Indian literary honor in 2018?
A) Sahitya Akademi Award
B) Padma Shri
C) Jnanpith Award ✅
D) Ananda Puraskar
87. Which of the following novels by Amitav Ghosh won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997?
A) The Circle of Reason
B) The Calcutta Chromosome ✅
C) The Glass Palace
D) Sea of Poppies
88. The Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh is set against the historical backdrop of which event?
A) The Indian Rebellion of 1857
B) The Partition of Bengal
C) The First Opium War ✅
D) The Narmada Bachao Andolan
89. In an Antique Land (1992) is difficult to categorize into a single genre but is often described as:
A) A Purely Gothic Novel
B) An Ethnographic Fiction or “Alternate Anthropology” ✅
C) A Science Fiction Thriller
D) A Verse Narrative
90. Which character in The Shadow Lines represents a middle-class worldview deeply entrenched in patriarchal and nationalist culture?
A) Ila
B) May Price
C) Tha’mma ✅
D) Tridib
91. Amitav Ghosh’s 2016 non-fiction work The Great Derangement primarily addresses the failure of literature and culture to engage with:
A) Postcolonial Subalternity
B) The History of the Opium Trade
C) Global Warming and Climate Change ✅
D) The 12th-Century Jewish Diaspora
92. In which book does Amitav Ghosh use the spice nutmeg as a parable for Western colonialism and the contemporary climate crisis?
A) Smoke and Ashes
B) The Nutmeg’s Curse ✅
C) Jungle Nama
D) Flood of Fire
93. Amitav Ghosh is the twelfth author to contribute a secret manuscript to be sealed until the year 2114 for which project?
A) The Nobel Library
B) The Future Library ✅
C) The Booker Archive
D) The Oxford Manuscript Vault
94. The Shadow Lines (1988) alludes to a novella of a similar name by which classical author?
A) E. M. Forster
B) Salman Rushdie
C) Joseph Conrad ✅
D) V. S. Naipaul
95. Which work features the 12th-century Jewish merchant Abraham Ben Yiju and his Indian slave Bomma?
A) The Glass Palace
B) In an Antique Land ✅
C) Gun Island
D) The Circle of Reason
96. Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide (2004) is primarily set in which ecologically sensitive region?
A) The Nile Delta
B) The Sundarbans ✅
C) The Malabar Coast
D) The Andaman Islands
97. Which award was conferred upon Amitav Ghosh in 2024 for his writings on the planetary crisis and climate change?
A) Pak Kyongni Prize
B) Erasmus Prize ✅
C) Dan David Prize
D) Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities
98. The Shadow Lines is structurally divided into which two parts?
A) “The Tide” and “The Land”
B) “Going Away” and “Coming Home” ✅
C) “The River” and “The Sea”
D) “Lataifa” and “Nashawy”
99. The Ibis Trilogy consists of which three novels?
A) The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, Gun Island
B) Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire ✅
C) The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome
D) Jungle Nama, The Living Mountain, Ghost-Eye
100. Amitav Ghosh’s 2025 novel, which explores themes of reincarnation and memory between late-sixties Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, is titled:
A) Smoke and Ashes
B) Ghost-Eye ✅
C) Wild Fictions
D) The Nutmeg’s Curse
101. From which university did Amitav Ghosh receive his D.Phil. in Social Anthropology?
A) University of Delhi
B) University of Alexandria
C) University of Chicago
D) University of Oxford ✅
102. Which non-fiction work by Ghosh, published in 2023, explores the “hidden histories” of the opium trade based on research for the Ibis Trilogy?
A) The Great Derangement
B) Incendiary Circumstances
C) Smoke and Ashes ✅
D) The Imam and the Indian
103. The Circle of Reason (1986), Ghosh’s debut novel, was awarded which French literary prize in 1990?
A) Prix Femina
B) Prix Médicis Étranger ✅
C) Prix Goncourt
D) Grand Prix du Roman
104. In The Shadow Lines, which character serves as the narrator’s intellectual guide and mentor, teaching him to use his “imagination with precision”?
A) Jethamoshai
B) Tridib ✅
C) Robi
D) Nick Price
105. Sea of Poppies (2008) features a “Chrestomathy” at the end of the book. What is its purpose?
A) To List Historical Documents Used as Sources
B) To Provide a Map of the Indian Ocean
C) To Explain the Meanings and Origins of Various Words and Pidgins Used in the Text ✅
D) To Provide a Biography of the Bihari Peasants
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